Prime Minister Liz Truss will attempt to save her premiership this week amid growing pressure on her to quit.
All eyes will be on the market reaction to her appointment of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor, with her own backbench MPs ready to turn on her.
Calls for Liz Truss to resign from Tory MPs
Three members of Ms Truss’s parliamentary party have already broken ranks to call on her to go.
Crispin Blunt, Andrew Bridgen and Jamie Wallis all called on the PM to quit on Sunday, while other senior figures within the parliamentary party expressed deep unease with Truss’s leadership but stopped short of calling for her to go.
Blunt was the first MP to demand her exit, telling Channel 4’s Andrew Neil Show on Sunday: “I think the game is up and it’s now a question as to how the succession is managed.”
It came at the end of another extraordinary weekend in British politics, that even saw US President Joe Biden intervene to call Ms Truss’s economic vision a “mistake”.
With the backdrop of rumoured plots and plans to install the defeated Rishi Sunak or Ben Wallace as the new leader, Truss met with her new Chancellor in Chequers.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to speak today
Hunt will make a statement today bringing forward measures from the medium-term fiscal plan that will support "fiscal sustainability", the Treasury said.
In the statement, the Treasury confirmed that the Chancellor would be fast-tracking the plans following conversations with the Prime Minister over the weekend.
The plans will be released in full on Monday, October 31.
The statement also said that Hunt had also met with the Governor of the Bank of England and the Head of the Debt Management Office on Sunday night to brief them on the plans.
It reads: “This follows the Prime Minister’s statement on Friday, and further conversations between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor over the weekend, to ensure sustainable public finances underpin economic growth.”
When will Jeremy Hunt make his announcement
Hunt is expected to make his announcement at 11am, The Times reports.
It will then be followed by a statement in the House of Commons at 3.30pm.
A backbench Conservative MP has said Liz Truss’s political weakness means that new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is now “de facto prime minister”.
Sir Roger Gale, MP for North Thanet, told Sky News: “I think Jeremy Hunt has taken on the job – it’s quite clear that’s he taken on the job – on his own terms.
“He’s said he will do it, but he will only do it if he can do what he believes to be necessary to stabilise the markets, to stabilise the economy and to get the show back on track… there is real power in Downing Street, but it’s not in No 10, it’s in No 11.”
Sir Roger told Kay Burley: “I think Jeremy Hunt is de facto prime minister at the moment.
“It’s quite clear that all the shots are now being called from No 11, and in a way I’m happy to say that I’m very pleased that they are because I think that will stabilise the markets and I hope that we can find a way forward for the United Kingdom.
“If he gets this wrong, then we’re going to go hell in a handcart but if he gets it right, then we can emerge from this, I think, better and stronger and we can start to move forward in the direction that we all really want to go.”
